ENGINEERING IN ACTION

Faculty and senior researchers at MIT are teaming up in unprecedented ways to help define the next frontier in human and machine intelligence with projects that delve into everything from fundamental research to societal applications for new technologies.

Kristala Jones Prather is speaking in a packed MIT lecture hall. Many of her students wear reading glasses, some have a little less hair than they used to, and most of them are well dressed and groomed. But all of these engineers, biologists, chemists, microbiologists, and biochemists take furious notes in thick course binders and lean forward to study the equations she jots on the chalkboard.

When A. R. Rahman, two-time Academy Award winner, singer-songwriter, and music producer from India, came to visit and take a course at MIT in July, he was in his element during a tour of interactive music systems on campus.

Looking back on his MIT graduate student days in the late 1980s, Admiral John M. Richardson SM ’89, EE ’89, ENG ’89 recalls a quieter time. He was not yet helming the world’s most powerful navy nor was global competition at sea nearly so high.

If humans are going to be able to travel to Mars one day, Cem Tasan’s research on metals just might play a role in the mission. Dr. Tasan, the Thomas B. King Career Development Professor in Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, works to produce metals that will bend with the changing times.